Shelling

by Martin Willitts Jr

One of us must speak, break conversation, repair it.

My father and I sit together without talking,

snapping open pea shells, six to a pod,

plinking into a bucket, a gentle rain sound.

Some shells we eat, but not these: they’re different.

We can’t fix broken.

I toss shells away as bullet-casting shells

and roll silence between my fingers.

I carry distance between us as a wounded soldier —

there are rules we break and rules we keep,

solemn cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die promises.

I need to talk about the constant shelling during

Vietnam, but my tongue rolls, plinks into the bucket.

Metallic notes from an African thumb piano.

Instead, I crack open shells.

Each pea becomes a miniature world in a galaxy of music,

worlds rolling between God’s fingers.

Snap peas, plink, plink, tink — Repetition numbs us

toward napping on this warm day, belly-full,

as the sun plink-snaps open clouds.

One of us must speak, break conversation, repair it.

But we don’t, stillness plinking. Bullets

never make round holes.

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Martin Willitts Jr edits the Comstock Review. Winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, 2015, Editor’s Choice; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, Artist’s Choice, 2016, Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, 2020. His 25 chapbooks include the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), 24 full-length collections including Blue Light Award “The Temporary World.” His forthcoming is “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji" will include all 36 color pictures.